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Thursday

Book Review: The Prisoner of Heaven

The Prisoner of Heaven- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I'm not going to lie. I totally bought this for the cover. Then it sat on my bedside table for weeks because I wasn't actually sure I was all that interested in reading it. Eventually, when I had nothing else to read, I gave it a shot. Meh, my instincts were right. This book is one of a series but they are presented as discrete stories so that they can be read in any order. I did find, however, that some things were mentioned without context, such as the cemetery of forgotten books. The Prisoner of Heaven tells the story of Fermin Romero de Torres, who was imprisoned for some reason that I've forgotten. Although the story was fairly engaging, I struggle in retrospect to understand the significance of his imprisonment. Maybe it was mentioned in the book and I just forgot. Perhaps it was assumed that the reader would make the connection. I'm not sure.One of my main problems, however, was Zafon's lack of elaboration. This could be a result of his intention being lost in translation, but during the dialogue, it was difficult to understand how the characters were interacting with each other. For a long time, I thought that Fermin and Daniel were enemies, because there was no indication of how they were interacting with each other- The words of dialogue were written without context. Some adverbs would have gone a long way. Overall, it was a fair enough stop-gap whilst waiting for something better to read. Perhaps I would have been more engaged had I read the previous books first but, after reading this, I have no desire to do so.

6 comments
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I've read quite a few of Ruiz Zafon's books, and I have to agree that a lot of them - particularly the ones aimed at very young audience aren't always coherent or very rich, but I did quite enjoy Shadow of the wind :O). Xx